New mobile planters for Hotwell Road railings & sociable bench planters

We designed & commissioned Bristol Wood Recycling Project to make 10 mobile planters for the Hotwells Road ‘entrance. Planted by locals at the Community Gardening day on 19^th May, these are now flourishing with pollution absorbing pollinators which should flower year round.

Modular bench planters were also designed and built with BWRP and installed in September. We had help from locals to plant them. Six year old Bori loves gardening and she did most of the work.

New Artworks

In June Luke Palmer fulfilled his long held ambition to paint his beautiful view of the Clifton Suspension Bridge, for which we are all very grateful!

In September Anna devised an engagement activity with Amy Hutchings to coordinate with the BOB 170 celebrations. This giant game of scrabbled involved over 50 passers by of all ages who were invited to contribute positive words about Hotwells. This initiative was in response to some really unpleasant tagging that had recently occurred and negative words being slung around the world more widely.

Friends of Hotwells Piazza

We are developing a ‘Friends of’ group to help with the maintenance and develop future plans for the site. We’re looking for people who like gardening, especially communally, people who are interested in urban greening and re-wilding, artists, community sports coaches and anyone else with ideas of improving the largest public open space in Hotwells. We have a facebook group if you would like to get involved. We are proud that the flora on the piazza needs so little maintenance and delighted to announce that we have only had to water the plants a handful of times this year and only once emptied out rain water butt.

Looking forward to 2020

Plans for the year ahead will focus on keeping the piazza as climate friendly as possible and reaching out to the community with events and activities. We're partnering with some local UWE art students who are part of the Climate Research Group to celebrate Earth Day at the end of April. We'd like to build a sculpture, some planters and some seating from 'eco-bricks' and experiment with other re-use ideas

All piazza work is funded by HCCA via the council’s Neighbourhood Partnership programme, the DCLG, private donations and funding for arts. Over the years and with huge amounts of volunteers’ time we have been able to plant trees, create new planters and planted areas, paint the pillars, commission murals by Bristol artists, make a skate spot and some play sculptures and organise events for the Peaceful Portway, the West Bristol Arts Trail and recently 170 years celebration of Brunel’s Other Bridge.

Massive thanks to all the volunteers and artists who have helped garden and paint over the years, to Ray Smith for his legacy money which is supporting the works this year and to Zoe Smith for her landscape design and sustainable planting support.